A massive meteorite crash shook the Urals region in central Russia early Friday, shattering windows and prompting panic in three major cities. According to some reports, the meteor was intercepted by the air defense complex at the Urzhumka village near the Russian city of Chelyabinsk, when a salvo missile allegedly burst the shooting star at an altitude of 20 kilometers.

Witnesses reported a sudden change in atmospheric pressure upon the impact that made their ears pop. The space object hit the ground with a tremendous crash that resembled thunder and earthquake, damaging houses in Chelyabinsk and cutting off communications, witnesses say.

I'm calling complete BS on this story. The meteorite was traveling at 30 km per second which is 18 miles per SECOND. Do the math and the speed is like several hundred mach. There is NO WAY a missile could catch up to a meteorite moving at that speed. The meteorite broke apart because that is what normally happens when they enter earth's atmosphere.

Or is there somebody out there who actually believes a missile caught up with a missile moving at 18 mpSECOND?

Regnum news agency quoted a military source who claimed that the vapor condensation trail of the meteorite speaks to the fact that the meteorite was intercepted by air defenses.

No. Actually it speaks to the fact that a military source was a complete idiot if he thought the condensation trail was caused by a missile interception. I sure hope the Russian military doesn't make this meteorite interception claim or they will end up as worldwide laughingstocks.

9
posted on 02/15/2013 5:11:45 AM PST
by PJ-Comix
(Beware the Rip in the Space/Time Continuum)

Watching the vid’s, I’ve got a suspicion that after the filming of a new disaster flick, but prior to release, the producers got the GREAT FANTASTIC Almost NEW idea for putting out the trailer. Sort of along the lines of the radio program about Martians in 1938...

11
posted on 02/15/2013 5:13:01 AM PST
by C210N
(When people fear government there is tyranny; when government fears people there is liberty)

From Russia Today online: The military had nothing to do with the aerial meteorite explosion, the Urals Emergency Ministry said: “Russia’s defense ministry took no action connected to the incident. No aircrafts has been registered in the air at the given period of time.” Earlier, there were unconfirmed reports that the military had shot down the falling meteorite, shattering it into pieces.

You can hit a bullet with the USS Missouri, if you have enough prior knowledge and a favorable geometry.

In general, reliable interception requires that the interceptor have a speed advantage, but that is certainly not a requirement. When the Navy used an SM-3 to intercept a defunct satellite in 2008, the satellite was traveling a much, much faster than the missile at intercept. (SM-3 has a top speed of 9600 km/hr, but it would have lost most of that just reaching altitude. Low earth orbit requires about 25,000 km/hr.)

Wouldn't it be around mach 55? Still valid point, no way their missile defense system could track anything that fast and get a shot off, forget about a missile actually catching the meteor. Even if the missile were heading directly to the meteor it wouldn't get launched before the meteor was down.

An ICBM travels pretty fast too, the idea is to intercept it not catch up with it. That said there is no anti missile system capable of intercepting a meteorite on short notice. By short notice I mean “Holly s**t what that in the sky?” lol, but just for grins a 20 lbs anything inpacking a meteor traveling at 60,000 mph would result in a very very big band as e=mv2 and 60k mph squared is a very big number. Lets do the math! Mass is about 9kg, velocity is about 30,000m per second so the energy is about 8.1 billion joules. That is enough energy to light up 81 million 100 watt light bulbs for 1 second. Or about 2.1 kilotons of TNT, a small nuke, Not bad for a 20lbs payload.

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